Technical Field
The present invention generally relates to the handling handover of communication protocol data between two satellite transponders and more particularly synchronizing and controlling the transferring and receipt of the communication protocol packets during the handover period between two satellites.
Discussion of Related Art
In the modern world of telecommunications, the concept of wireless data network global coverage is vital. Real time data global coverage can be achieved mainly by satellite systems. The development of satellite networks which enable real time wireless coverage requires considering the different orbiting cycles of the satellites. The need is to provide a solution for real time continuous wireless coverage of satellite networks without losing too many packets during switching periods between satellites.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,157,621 discloses a Satellite Communication System of a dynamic constellation (C) of satellites capable of offering continuous voice, data and video service to customers across the globe on the land, on the sea, or in the air. The invention comprises a low Earth orbit satellite system that includes 40 spacecraft (S) traveling in each of 21 orbital planes at an altitude of 700 km (435 miles). This relatively large number of satellites employed by the invention was selected to provide continuous coverage of the Earth's surface at a high minimum mask angle (1230a) of forty degrees. Each of the individual 840 spacecraft (S) functions as an independent sovereign switch of equal rank which knows the position of its neighbors, and independently handles traffic without ground control. The satellites (S) are capable of transporting calls to millions of customers using portable (P), mobile (M) and fixed (F) residential and business terminals, and gateways (G) to public phone networks.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,298,073, discloses a method for fixing the propagation delay between a user terminal and another station in a non-synchronous LEO satellite communications system, to adjust plural signals to have substantially similar times-of-arrival, uses an elastic buffer to insert a variable delay in the received signal processing, so as to cause a fixed time for each data/vocoder bit, from the time that bit enters the transmit modulation process until the time that same data/vocoder bit is output to a user.